This Quebec true crime film is a global hit. Why hasn't English Canada caught on?

Le Bel Écran is a monthly column about Quebec's screen culture from a local perspective. 

There isn't much blood in Pascal Plante's Red Rooms, but that doesn't stop it from crawling under your skin. The film features one of the most unsettling moments I've seen in any movie. Two young women are seated in front of a computer screen in a cold, minimalist condo. We hear screaming and the sound of power tools. We hear splatter. Their faces glow with red light and tears stream down one of their faces. It makes the hair on my arms stand on end just thinking about it today.

Red Rooms is Pascal Plante's third-feature film and the Quebecois filmmaker's first thriller. It reimagines the serial killer film from an unusual perspective as it follows two young women who sit in the courtroom. They're "serial killer groupies," obsessively following the details of the case. Last summer, the film premiered in the Czech Republic at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where it won the prize for Best Film. Not long after, it opened the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal.

"It was triumphant," says Mathieu Li-Goyette, editor-in-chief of Panorama-Cinéma, an online film journal based in Montreal, of the film's Quebec premiere. "It was riding high," he explains in French. "The reception was exceptional. Everyone loved it in the room and it was a strong start for the film's trajectory in Quebec." 

What set Red Rooms apart was not just that it was a true crime film, it was about true crime. The movie reflected on a growing phenomenon of amateur detectives and murder obsessives gravitating toward podcasts, TV series and internet communities. Who among us hasn't indulged in the ever growing content mill of true crime? Pascal Plante's film shows the dark side of this phenomenon and its impact on the victim's families and the real scale of violence (a real feat as most of the bloodshed remains off-screen). 

With many scenes shot from behind a computer screen in lonely apartments, the movie seems to turn the camera back onto us. The glazed-over look of Kelly-Anne's gaze as she does her online sleuthing and investigating, reveals a point of view on our digital lives that amplifies alienation. Kelly-Anne's quest to find the final tape created by a serial killer to put him in jail is exposed as a less-than noble journey for justice, but a singular and obsessive quest. 

"The heart of the film, at its base, is about true crime fandom," says Li-Goyette. "I think that's why it's connected so much. Most crime stories follow the police or an investigator but here, it's just someone from the public who is just crazy and disciplined enough to have influence on an investigation. For once, it's a movie that represents the audience and the audience likes those kinds of stories."

Red Rooms didn't sweep the Iris, Quebec's version of the Oscars, but "it really connected with audiences though," says Li-Goyette. He points to other films like Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person and the upcoming, Vile and Miserable, an adaptation of a popular graphic novel, as part of a similar wave of genre films resonating with a larger audience. "They're well-made genre films that are helping audiences reconnect a bit with popular cinema." 

Red Rooms has found surprise success outside of Quebec with modest box-office results in France last year and this fall in the UK and the USA. The film's success seems modelled on that within the province; it's not a huge financial success but it's one of the most talked about films of the fall among critics and in-the-know horror fans. 

For Li-Goyette, part of the film's success is that it appeals to a wider trend within cinephilia. "It's a bit of a crime thriller with a David Fincher touch, a bit of the same thing as many other films, but with the added touch of focusing on women," he says. "I have a sense that our commercial cinema [in Quebec] is moving more in that direction. A cold, almost mathematical efficiency. I almost see it as part of an inferiority complex, that to compete with Hollywood and anglophone productions, we need to show the world we're "professionals."

The film though is unmistakably from Quebec. The movie is set in the streets of Montreal; it features the Palais de Justice. The language has the tones and intonation unmistakably Quebecois. Mathieu Li-Goyette also points out how the film also uses tropes from Quebec culture, such as the TV program that's featured prominently within the movie, a riff on the extremely popular panel show, Tout le monde en parle. 

Though the film has found near universal acclaim, Li-Goyette stands as a rare dissenter. He likes the film but has reservations. "I really enjoy the evolution of Pascal Plante's work and think it's good the film has attracted attention to his filmmaking and also Quebec cinema, but I also question its moral vision," he says. "The lead character is presented as a techno-hacker superhero and it's easy to get swept up in that without asking too many questions. It's presented a bit uncritically." Without going too deep into spoilers, his objections lie in the final act, with how Kelly-Anne secures the tape. 

Li-Goyette admits that he's a bit harsher on the film because it's from Quebec. "If the film was from Finland," he laughs, "I probably wouldn't be as critical." It reveals a common point of discussion among Quebec critics: with our cinema so dependent on public funding, how to be critical without feeding into bad actors who want to defund the arts. The critical community feels a responsibility to its cinema, not just in celebrating it, but holding it to account. "We feel very close to the films, very involved," he says. 

Produced in collaboration with The Quebec Creator Network